Speaking on the Team Deakins podcast, as reported by Female First, the Oscar-winning actress said she had never publicly shared this before.

“I’ll share something I’ve never shared before. Some of my first intimate experiences as a young teen were actually with girls,” Winslet said.

She added that she was still exploring her feelings at the time. “I’d kissed a few girls, I’d kissed a few boys, but I wasn’t particularly evolved in either direction,” she said, describing herself as “curious” during that phase of her life.

Winslet said she deeply related to the intense emotional bond portrayed between two teenage girls in the 1994 film Heavenly Creatures, in which she starred at the age of 17.

“I think there was something about the really intense connection that those two women have that I profoundly understood,” she said.

The actress referred to the real-life inspiration behind the film, which depicts an obsessive relationship that ultimately led to a murder. “I was so immediately sucked into the vortex of that world they were in — which obviously became horrendously damaging to both of them,” she said.

“Of course, I couldn’t truly understand that part of it, but I could certainly understand how influenced a young person’s mind can become by just one other person when you’re so vulnerable,” she added.

Winslet, who rose to global fame with her performance in the 1997 blockbuster Titanic, said her experience working on Heavenly Creatures proved to be life-changing.

“I know I came back a different person,” she said. “I’d evolved so much in my learning and life experience, and being in that wonderful country.”